The classical mode of clathrin-mediated endocytosis in non-neuronal cells occurs on the time-scale of a minute while retrieval of synaptic vesicles usually occurs 1-10 s after fusion. To investigate the molecular dynamics of fast endocytosis, we applied dual-colour total internal reflection fluorescence and confocal microscopy to ribbon synapses of retinal bipolar cells. These cells were derived from transgenic zebrafish expressing either combination of two of the following fluorescently labelled proteins: the fusion reporter sypHy, clathrin-eGFP/mCherry and/or the synaptic ribbon marker ribeye-mCherry. In bipolar cells we made three striking observations. 1) Calcium-triggered fusion events happen mainly at the rim of synaptic ribbons − highly specialized release sites − and are correlated in time with an increase in the clathrin signal. 2) Individual clathrin events occur significantly further away from ribbons. 3) Two different kinds of clathrin events could be recorded. The first was a sudden decrease in the clathrin signal, signifying movement of clathrin-coated structures away from the plasma membrane. The second signal was an immediate recruitment of clathrin to the membrane colocalized with sites of vesicle fusion. Findings obtained by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in both bipolar cell terminals and hippocampal neurons showed that the synaptic vesicle marker synaptophysin was associated with clathrin on the same relatively slowly diffusing structures. Only about 25% of the total clathrin was diffusing freely in the cytosol. These results were also verified by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. Taken together our results from ribbon and hippocampal synapses indicate that clathrin is associated with synaptic vesicles even before a fusion event. This may provide a mechanism for priming vesicles of the readily releasable pool for the fast mode of endocytosis, making them readily retrievable.